Side note: it was RTO mandates that killed this.

But I digress. It made me wonder: is this fun, experimenting, creative, flexible environment one that pops up in general when all companies first form and the business realities of non-unlimited funding haven't caught up with the leadership yet? Is it something that hits all companies for a while when the economy is on an upward trend (as I attested to in my own company)? Have people found pockets of this kind of environment, even in the worst of times?

I'm trying to figure out when and where it exists so I can find it again. I'd never experienced it until covid, and now that I have, I want it back, and for the first time, I'm willing to do something major to get it because I know now what it feels like. It feels like Star Trek Generations, where that guy is trying to do whatever he can to get back on the nexus (except I'm not trying to destroy a planet).

You might say "get over it and stop feeling bad - you have something good," and I know I do, but the past hangs over me like a never-ending storm. How can I ever forgive myself for what I did? The thought of them safe in their mother's wombs and being ripped out...I can hardly bear it. I carry this pain daily. I have since learned that having kids is the best thing that ever happened to me. It taught me how to love in a way I hadn't ever before. Having this knowledge makes the past even harder to accept. Who would those unborn have been today? What would they have taught me? How can I be a caring person to have done this?

I can't say I can relate to your situation, so please forgive any apparent glibness, but I would gladly sign up to go through what a lot of people here have done for their children with special needs just to have the chance to have known them. It may sound easy for me to say, but be glad you didn't make my choices. If someone else reads this who did, please know that there is also a part of me that realizes I thought things would be different, and I went on the information I had, which was bad. I'm not at all judging you. You did the best you could. Despite me sounding self condemning, I'm just very regretful that I didn't make a different choice.

All this to say: I hope you find a little more validation from my story that you are on a good path, and that you are not cursed, but rather have a gift. It's a gift I chose to throw away. It sounds like it's hard to manage at times but it's very much a gift. I know that sounds dismissive and cheesy, like everything everyone would say because it sounds good and doesn't acknowledge the real sacrifices you've had to make in comparison to friends who don't understand, but I want you to know that I truly mean it, and I understand, maybe unlike others who say it, what it really means, because I look at you and want so badly what you have, if it meant having all my children alive in my life. Your child taught you how to love - deeper and more alive than anything else possibly could have. It may seem like life/God used force to shape you like this, but I'm learning that's the only way it can work sometimes. You have to get to a point where you are willing to see it differently, and God will find a way to show you that. Maybe your child's presence forced you to make a choice to break through your own ego and be willing to love them. If so, it no doubt transformed you. Learning that is the greatest lesson life can teach. You are on a good path. It won't be evident for a time, but you absolutely are. I send you my best.

In that previous CEO role, as I understand it, he left on bad terms over some kind of compensation disagreement (ironic?).

A red flag in the beginning was that one of our engineers still runs an authorized service center for that former company's returns. Yet, when the CEO started our company, one of the first things he went about trying to do was to smear the last company in the press (which would have been technically hurting part of the business of the engineer I mentioned, who still made income servicing that company's products). The guy just doesn't think about other people, yet he's good at bringing in the dollars.

I think people are seeing the sales and letting that put off their concerns (if they have them) about whether they will be compensated and when. I have to be honest - I have seen him get us out of some sticky situations by pivoting at the last minute. He used his industry experience to do that, which also contributed to the ability to even do that. It gives him a perception of knowing way more than anyone else, and so they are inclined to trust him when he says this compensation strategy will be acceptable. With this experience, he has an aura of wisdom that makes people feel almost foolish for broaching the subject of pay (I know, I've tried it).

What's doubly ironic is that he insists on air-tight contracts with suppliers and customers, and mentions it being okay to "bend them over" once in a while, since we're paying them and they're locked in. Yet, for an employee, I had to fight tooth and nail just to get the lame contract I have with him for pay.

Update: yesterday, CEO tells me he will offer the guy who started 2 weeks ago the same equity I have, because he's done "such a good job". He has been kicking it hard, it's true, and he does really well, but he's fresh, and the CEO's perspective is so skewed based on what's bright and shiny in front of him at the moment that he totally disregards the contribution of people working for him 7 months for free who got him to where he's at now.

The sad part is I think he knows this damn well, and his strategy well may be to operate a company on a string of trusting people who he will continue to cycle in as the disenchanted ones before them leave.

I've gone back recently to try to change the equity share I get, as I understand that most founders on board when I was typically receive anywhere from 10 to 30%. The CEO tells me that I'm the only one with any kind of agreement, and that makes me far better off (?!). Apparently, no one else has anything in writing. When I ask the CEO about this, he not only seems to hint that people will be very tied to the company (executives will have a 6 year vesting schedule...what?), but he seems to think that if anyone gets any equity now, it will turn off investors. He wants to maintain majority control in the company so no investors can come along and "steal" it from him, AND he wants to set aside a monstrous chunk of equity for these investors. He hints that employees will get some "down the road", but that this is an effective way to get investment. He tells me I'm too "9 to 5" security focused (which, honestly, I do tend to be. I'm working at a full time "real" job while doing this near full time).

He keeps telling me that I need to trust him and that he'll reward people down the road based on their performance.

I'm all for tying incentives to actual performance, but this is just so loosely defined.

Am I being overly rigid not trusting this guy while proving my worth? The more I read, the more it seems this is a bogus deal. Is there any merit to this idea that having employees with equity will turn off investors?

Does this make any kind of sense, or am I completely a chump?

Thanks

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11179944

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